Orphan Black Finally Finds Limit to Tatiana Maslany's Powers

Remember when I said they kept raising the bar and raising the bar and raising the bar on what Tatiana Maslany could do? Well, they finally set the bar too far: Tatiana Maslany can do almost anything, but she can't quite pull off manly.

Yes, meet trans man clone Tony. It's clearly Tatiana Maslany with a couple hairs spirit-gummed to her chin and some Mommie Dearest brows. She's not exactly disappearing into the character, and sure, a lot of that is physicality. Like this guy is mainlining "Big T"? Costume department, I'm looking at you.

Usually costume and hair gives Tatiana such a great scaffolding to build on, but I think the Tony look came together a little last minute. Like someone in the costume trailer was like "What? Tony's a guy? Oh shit, we're rolling in ten minutes. Look, put a sock in her briefs, give her a top-knot demi up-do and I don't know, Timberlands? Sure. Okay. Crisis averted." But for actual dialogue and personality, Tony was fun, except for the kissing Felix thing.

I'm sorry, but if I were Felix and a guy who looked just like my sister wearing a goatee came into a room I am confident I would break down every last detail of Clone Club before I would let him kiss me. Like, here are all my secrets, I wish I had more to tell you, just don't make me understand what it would be like to kiss my sister lest I vomit everything inside of me outside of me, including my foot bones. But Felix just sort of kissed Tony back after Tony's extremely lingering overtures like, "Huh, that's what that's like" Uhhhh NOPE! I kind of don't believe Felix would be cool with that.

Tony's super-secret message he had come to tell all of them was: Paul is a ghost. Take that for what you will.

As for like, actual plot: Donny and Allison came clean about their mutual man-slaughterin' in a very cute scene. I think their marriage is going to be stronger than ever, now that they've both drank deep of the cup of regret and alcohol.

Cosima and Delphine got super stoned in a way that makes me wonder if any of the writers have ever gotten high before. I mean sucking down helium from balloons and playing smooth island tunes real real low with all those queasy camera angles?

After she was baked like a lil' pot pie Delphine told Cosima "je t'aime" and Cosima was like "IF YOU EVER TURN ON THE CLONES AGAIN I WILL DESTROY YOU and also I love you." These two!

The Clone Maker Himself went to Dyad to help work on a cure for Cosima and revealed one of the biggest secrets of the season: the clones were designed to be infertile. Sara's fertility is "a mistake." It made Rachel go pretty postal in some cut in shots that I found rather confusing (was she internally freaking out? Did she freak out later when he left? Don't they still need that set?)

Also Ethan wrote in some kind of important sequence into Kira's book, which like, what?!?! DNA sequences are usually gajillions of nucleotides long, bro. How are you going to fit all that just in the blank pages of Island of Dr. Moreau? And even if you could, way to make Kira more of a target, dude! And things escalated incredibly fast with Cosima. She went from shaking Dr.Duncan's hand and being ready to get to work to, thirty seconds later, seizing up in a pile of her own blood. So yeah, the show hit a lot of beats and it didn't leave itself a lot of room to hit this dramatic turn very gracefully.

I've never seen an episode of the show I didn't like...until maybe now? I dunno guys, but this was the first episode I've seen of Orphan Black where it felt really written. Call it the weak-sauce new clone makeover, or the turn-on-a-dime collapse by Cosima, but I am itching to get back to the egg farm with Helena and out of all this other mess.

[Images viaBBC America]

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